"Very many pleasures are almost only pleasures because we hope and intend to recount them." –Giacomo Leopardi

Tag Archives: Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

“Do you get the feeling,” my husband hisses in my ear, “that maybe we shouldn’t BE here?”

We are standing in the middle of Kilauea Iki Crater in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii. Steam vents issue super-heated mist that rises, wraithlike, from the barren, lunar-like surface.

Here and there, giant slabs of crust are piled upon one another like asphalt after an earthquake, and deep fissures create jagged scars across the face of the crater.

I cautiously sidle up to the rim of one nasty gash and peer down, half expecting to see a river of red-hot lava, but it’s dark and seemingly bottomless. There are no barriers, no ropes, nothing to keep me from falling in but my own common sense.

Of course, if I had common sense, would I be hiking across a volcanic crater? I’m forced to concede that my husband may have a point.

That’s the Big Island for you. Bewitched by its wild beauty, you find yourself pushing your limits, drawn—quite literally—to life on the edge. (more…)